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Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox 

11/2/2024

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With the days ticking down to 11/5, learn the deeper stakes in this year's election. Get your copy of Trump & the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election today! Choose your format in the book block below. 

We should all be treated as equals in our basic rights and needs and treat others as equals. That is a premise of democracy—“all men are created equal” as Thomas Jefferson put it in his opening line of the 

“All People are Created Equal.” izzitEDU

Declaration of Independence.

Clearly, this was an aspiration and not a reality in his day, since slaves were not considered equal nor were women even mentioned. It took a civil war and decades more of hard work for these groups to claim their equality including a second, nonviolent civil rights revolution that insured voting rights and put Jim Crow to rest. Now, 60 years later, the fight still goes on.

But the goal, the aspiration, was planted early and like a seed had to grow and blossom through a civil war, constitutional amendments, struggles for women’s emancipation, and civil rights battles.

Eckhart draws a conclusion from his insistence on equality when he says  that we need to “practice equality in human society.” Since then Christ’s whole nobility belongs equally to us all and is equally near to us, to him as much as to me…you must understand that, if someone wants to come by this gift equally to receive this good and the common nature which is equally near to all people, you must needs practice the same equality in human society… being no nearer to yourself than to another, just as in human nature there is nothing alien, nothing farther or nearer. 

We are all related. DNA Mystery Solver

Societal relationships develop from healthy relationship with one’s self. If we are brothers and sisters in one God, then we are all equals. Here lies the springboard for compassion. You are to love, esteem, and consider all people like yourself, what happens to another, be it 

bad or good, should be for you as if it happened to you.

All love demands equality. Love will never be anything else than there where equality and unity are. Between a master and his servant there is no peace because there is no real equality. Peace and tranquility among peoples demand their equality. 

The same holds for personal relations and for marriage. “A wife and a husband are not alike, but in love they are equal.” Where equality is lacking, we are to bring it forth. “There can be no love where love does not find equality or does not create equality.” Jesus’ teaching about love culminates in the need for democracy."

Societal leadership is of the same ilk. Eckhart: If I were to lead people, they would never follow me with pleasure if they did not receive equality with me. For a movement or a deed is never accomplished with pleasure in the absence of equality.   

Eckhart, writing 450 years before Thomas Jefferson, has a far broader understanding of democracy than he did. For Eckhart does not limit the dignity of personhood to men or white people or men with property as did Jefferson in practice if not on paper.

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. Wikimedia Commons

For Eckhart, we are born noble—all of us—and it is from that royalty, that our rights derive and we in turn are urged to treat others as ourselves and live "equally."

Eckhart bases his view on the teachings of Jesus. The work of finding and making equality continues up to and including the current election. Not to pursue it is to be unchristlike. It is to be antichrist therefore.

Adapted from Matthew Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, pp. 34-36.

See also: Fox, “Sermon Thirty-six: Everyone an Aristocrat, Everyone a Royal Person,” in Fox, Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart, pp. 510-530.

And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer on Creation Spirituality.

And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.

Banner image: We are one. Photo by Gary Butterfield on Unsplash

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Queries for Contemplation

Do you agree with Eckhart that “there can be no love where love does not find equality or does not create equality”? And that becomes a basis for democracy ? 

Recommended Reading

Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election

Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.

For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE. 

To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE. 

To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.

Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.

Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart

Matthew Fox’s comprehensive translation of Meister Eckhart’s sermons is a meeting of true prophets across centuries, resulting in a spirituality for the new millennium. The holiness of creation, the divine life in each person and the divine power of our creativity, our call to do justice and practice compassion–these are among Eckhart’s themes, brilliantly interpreted and explained for today’s reader.
“The most important book on mysticism in 500 years.”  — Madonna Kolbenschlag, author of Kissing Sleeping Beauty Goodbye.  

Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth

Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story

The Return of Father Sky: A Cosmic Mystery for Kids of All Ages

The second book in the Father Fox’s Fantastical Fables series, The Return of Father Sky helps boys and girls to celebrate a new relationship with the masculine by way of Father Sky, whose return excites joy and wonder and possibility that enlarge the soul to welcome others and all creation. Written in a rhyming Dr. Seuss-like style, this full-color, beautifully illustrated book, written by world- renowned theologian Matthew Fox weaves together modern science and classic spirituality in a whimsical, entertaining format to illustrate important truths to readers aged 4 and up. With artwork curated from illustrators around the world, this book expresses the joy and wonder of all peoples and cultures, planting seeds of respect, cooperation and hope to work together for the healing of our planet.

UPCOMING EVENTS

See Matthew Fox's full calendar HERE

MONTHLY: Join Matthew Fox, Mariko Middleton, and Skylar Wilson of the Order of the Sacred Earth in a free virtual meeting for connection and networking with other mystic warriors. Last Tuesday of every month, 4:00-5:00pm PT. 
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